Cablevision rolling out consumer VoIP services

Cablevision officials said today that the cable operator will launch voice-over-IP services by the end of the month, offering a flat-rate local and long-distance service to its entire tri-state cable broadband footprint by the end of the year.

The service, called Optimum voice, will be available to all of Cablevision’s Optimum Online high-speed Internet customers, working over a standard analog telephone plugged into a Motorola hybrid cable/voice over IP modem. Cablevision will charge $34.95 a month for unlimited local and long-distance calling in the U.S. and to Canada, a spokeswoman for the cable company said.

The new offering, gives Cablevision a significant network-wide bundle of cable programming, broadband and voice services, which is sure to compete directly with Verizon’s local/long distance and data offerings in the New York City region. Verizon is the only RBOC yet to sign a contract with a digital broadcast satellite provider, leaving it with no immediate avenue for providing television services. But Verizon has announced its intent to bundle wireless services with wireline, a package its cable competitors can’t yet match.

Though not the biggest Multiple System by far, Cablevision has been one of the most successful in its broadband deployments in the New York metropolitan region. Currently 23% of its homes past, or 921,000 customers, subscriber to Cablevision’s broadband service. The company has also offered a circuit-switched phone service for several years, but stopped marketing the service when it decided to pursue IP technology. Still, Cablevision still services 12,000 circuit-switched customers through its subsidiary LightPath, and though the company will offer to transfer those customers to the new VoIP platform, it will continue to run the service for hold-outs, the spokeswoman said.

Cablevision originally trailed the VoIP service in Long Island, N.Y., in January using a hard switch, but since then it has deployed a Siemens softwitch into the core of the network to handle the anticipated traffic. When the VoIP network is fully built out, 4.4 million customers will be eligible for the data/voice offering.